Brotherhood
by Obsidian Blade
Summary: An exercise in summary. The misspent youth of a blood elf mage.
1. Chapter 1

**BROTHERHOOD**  
by Obsidian Blade

It starts, really, with the cat. Skinny thing, tufted, feral: it poses regally enough, but swipes at him like a desperate vagrant whenever he gets too close. He apologises to it, a simple 'I'm sorry' to start with, building into a rambling explanation of the whys and wherefores when he takes note of the way its big, pointed ears swivel about at the sound of his voice.

'Really it's nothing personal, and I'd sooner learn from a textbook than go poking at you, but you know how tutors are – do you know how tutors are? Stuffy mostly, and much too set on things being done their own way every time, if you ask me.'

This isn't exactly a task set by a tutor, but the prefects whose ranks he hopes to join. He's young for it at twenty-seven, a full three exams away from the average magical aptitude level of the others, but his father's stern assertions have made Baelmyrr Alvantaris well aware that he's not doing the family proud just yet, and this seems as sound a way as any to claw his way back into Haelmyrr's good books, a task he has become familiar with over the years.

For this attempt, he must familiarise himself with the cat. The prefects weren't entirely exhaustive with the details; rather, he knows only that he must spend the weekend with the creature, studying it and making sure it doesn't starve in the process. Baelmyrr suspects starvation would be more the culmination of prior months of malnourishment than his own failure as a provider in the case of his particular stray, but has no intention of raising this point. Instead, he practices his conjuring. He summons up fish, minced steak and milk in silver bowls, and resolves that his subject will leave his care in far better health than it came – if he parts with it at all.

As the weekend wears on and the cat becomes more tolerant of his presence, allowing him to stay close as it feeds, and finally permitting him to lay a hand on its fragile skull and stroke its coarse fur, Baelmyrr finds himself formulating reasons why his parents should tolerate a new addition to the household. When even his wildest dreams eventually submit to the simple fact that they never will, he goes so far as to pencil out his finances in the margin of his workbook, and scratch his head over the practicality of moving out. Then he remembers that life decisions probably shouldn't be made on behalf of a stray.

He names it Sunny, and spends four hours engraving a collar with the name.

And then the weekend is over, and he is summoned to the prefects' tower after his classes. They set Sunny in his cage in the middle of the room, and question Baelmyrr on feline physiology. They want to see evidence that he observes well and can articulate those observations, that he can hypothesise on those functions he cannot presently be sure of. Finally, they want to see how he processes information into effectual spells.

'Use your magic. Kill the cat.'

Yes, it starts with Sunny: it starts with the first real choice, the first brush with power and the wielders of power. It starts when one of the prefects, with dark hair and fine robes, his head inclined regally, stares down his nose at Baelmyrr and arches one brow.

'Alvantaris, was it? You will soon learn that compromise and sacrifice are necessary.'

The words ignite a fury within him beyond anything he has felt before: he rejects the notion violently. He rejects the idea that he should have to kill to prove himself as a thinker, as a caster; he rejects the idea that someone as self-important, as self-promoted as this patronising student should be allowed to put him into such a situation, holding the prefect post to such immoral ransom.

Though he rallies against them all, though he debates the point with fervour, they kill Sunny anyway: a disassembling spell that pulls him apart so they might sketch the layout of his innards. Baelmyrr could have given them the same result by magicking the cat's skin and muscle temporarily translucent. But where would be the bloody violence in that?

He feels trapped in the school from there on after. His old study routine, putting in adequate effort for the most part, working exceptionally hard for brief stints after a rebuke from mother or father, had been on track to earn him an excellent qualification, but he abandons it now, spends his time socialising with a new circle of friends and practising the illusion spells everyone ranks as simple and superficial, worthless for the exams. He doesn't _want_ to succeed in the manner laid out for him by those teachers and lecturers who, faced with a report on the death of a hapless stray, waved it off as an acceptable experiment.

He doesn't want to deceive his parents, either, but learns by chance that cockiness and a well-placed grin ease through a white lie about the state of his education, and soon finds himself putting the method into practice over and over. Rebellion through apathy in terms of his schoolwork is not a wholly effective release, but each dark mood that grips him maintains its hold for hours at the most, and there is always some little trigger to blame it on. A snide remark from a teacher. An altercation with a friend. Bad weather. A conjured lunch that's slightly off.

He gets a part-time job working at a jewellers across town where nobody knows him, and he doesn't really wonder why to start with. The urge simply takes him, and he runs with it. It is reportedly impossible to hold down a job while studying arcanistry, but it proves perfectly doable when merely coasting on bloodline talent.

The profession occupies a strange place in the social strata: though it involves frowned upon manual work in the cutting and polishing of stones and the creation of metal settings, there is an artistic element in design, and the people of Silvermoon have a great appreciation for beauty. In conversation with his new mentor, Baelmyrr learns that people will dwell on whichever aspect of the profession suits their purpose. A beloved jeweller will be praised for their artistic vision, their less popular contemporaries derided for their manual medium. He cannot quite place the irritation this plants within him.

But it is growing. It grows as he finds himself stalking the affordable parts of the city, peering up into the windows of the flats and the shared houses; as he tallies his earnings at the end of each day and falls asleep with calculations of living cost and income running together in his head; as his friends make blithe criticisms of passersby based on class and race and standardised beauty; as he puts quill to page at the start of his last exam and writes out neatly at the start of his essay, 'For the benefit of my oppressors, I have chosen the clearest of topics, so as to least tax your brains.'

And he finds himself faintly aware that his righteous anger has got the better of him not when he reads through his final results, fourteen years after Sunny's death, and finds he's scraped the lowest pass, but when his parents discover the same, and stare at him as though he's torn out their hearts and thrown them in the dust.

Haelmyrr ceases to speak to him, and Ollyria asks him to stop whenever he tries to broach a meaningful subject. All she can stomach from him now is idle talk of the weather and what they might be having for dinner – a meal he eats alone in his room, now that his father has banished him from the table. This makes it impossible to tell them of his full employment at the jewellers. As far as they are aware, he could simply be roving the city aimlessly for eight hours a day. He would be more forceful in setting them straight, if he felt the truth would treat them any better.

Because perceptions matter to him again, now that they belong to his parents. Now that he's hurt them and he can't seem to make it right. He finds himself out on his balcony with whiskey in hand with increasing frequency, his fingertips throbbing from hours' work at his newest pieces, his head heavy with the thought of his mother's open grief and his father's growing aggression. But the urge to fix things is not enough without inspiration as to how to go about it, and as the months go by and the crack down the middle of the household begins to exude a certain sense of permanence, he finds himself surveying the figures once again. He has enough money to move out, and spare them the torment of his presence.

But first, after months of avoiding them both, and of being avoided, he makes his mother a necklace, the family crest, set with her favourite stones, and leaves it where she will find it, along with a note.

'_Mother, _

_An inadequate apology, for all I have done, and all I have failed to do._

_Your son.'_

His father comes to him. He falls into step with Baelmyrr as he is walking home from work, and Baelmyrr has to wonder if his profession was ever a secret after all. He does not inquire. He waits instead for Haelmyrr to speak, and tries to control his imagination as it conjures up words of forgiveness and affection. The walk passes in silence. On the doorstep, his father stops and looks at him. He speaks only as he steps inside, words thrown back over his shoulder.

'Your mother's pregnant.'


	2. Chapter 2

The money he had stockpiled to fund his move away finds new purpose in the purchase of a cot, clothes, bottles and blankets. Baelmyrr finds some amusement reflecting on his own enthusiasm – on the way he leads his parents through the relevant shops, the two of them trailing behind, arm in arm. Presumably they expended all their enjoyment of the material side of things preparing their home for Baelmyrr himself; he suspects his father may even be inwardly cursing his own lack of foresight in throwing all the old equipment away.

He's happy to be the one who pushes the preparations; he finds himself enamoured with the idea that he might take on the full strain of planning and redecorating, so that all his parents' strength can be reserved for the baby's arrival. His mother in particular shows signs of needing the support. She is older than most expectant mothers. It wears on her health and her temper. She swears at him far more than she did during their feud, and spends time glowering through the dining room window, her arms folded behind her.

Baelmyrr's baby brother is born in the autumn, and his parents do not have a name ready for him. Baelmyrr muses on the subject as he watches over the boy at night, and when he feeds, burps, washes and clothes him. One parent or the other instructs him in these endeavours at the start.

It's their mother Baelmyrr wins a smile from first, when the tying of nappies proves so difficult he has to beg for further help, and watches over her shoulder with rapt attention as she demonstrates once more. Haelmyrr proves more persistently stony-faced, but in the middle of the night both men rise to soothe the squalling infant, and Baelmyrr gets there first. His father finds him rocking the boy and murmuring to him, and clasps Baelmyrr's shoulder solidly.

'I'm glad you're here, Son.'

Haelmyrr smiles before he walks away.

Two months pass before the boy has a name: Daelythir. Though he puts all his effort into throwing food and bawling, Baelmyrr knows his little brother is bright and talented, destined for something special. He carries him about when he can, keeps him with him as he sketches out jewellery designs at home, explaining every projected aspect of composition. The baby burbles back some excellent constructive criticism, and likes to chew pencils.

Daelythir even provides a reason to go back to light study of magic. It might have been a painful knot of a subject before, so tangled up in a sense of disempowerment and tyranny that Baelmyrr had been on the verge of giving it up altogether, of burning his books, but there's something about the delight of the baby at the sight of a conjured sparrow or flurry of sparks that cuts through it all. Magic has no inherent negativity when it serves as entertainment for a young child, and Baelmyrr finds himself thinking that, used safely, it really has no inherent negativity at all. It is a tool, and it is not intrinsically tied to the regime that first taught him to use it. He can apply it as he likes, and he decides that he will.

It is still awkward at home, even as Baelmyrr's failure at school becomes steadily more distant and less relevant with each passing year. He is paying rent, now, at his own insistence, and funds Daelythir almost entirely as well. He buys the boy food and clothes and his first pair of shoes, when inelegant scooting progresses into a staggering toddle.

Perhaps, instead, it is the amount of time away that puts his father into his moods: Baelmyrr often stays late at the jewellers to keep up with a burgeoning workload; he visits the library on the weekends to research new spells; and he is back in the school time habit of biweekly outings with friends in the evenings, leaving before dinner and returning a few hours before breakfast. Haelmyrr meets him in the doorway shortly after Daelythir turns seven; it's late in the evening, and Baelmyrr has only just found time to leave the shop after the jeweller himself stayed at home with a fever.

'Get back sooner. Who do you think feeds that boy if not you?'

Baelmyrr is too shocked to respond, and his father never raises the point again. Daelythir shows no signs of malnourishment – he welcomes Baelmyrr home with the same running tackle every day, skips around him on their long walks around the city, demonstrates increasing acrobatic skill with his flips, handstands and rolls – and Baelmyrr is struck with shame that he even thought to check. His father's words, indisputably, amounted to a joke that went over his head, and he resolves to put them out of mind.

But the awkwardness in the household is less easily set aside and forgotten, as it never seems to leave. Baelmyrr starts to wonder if he's imagining it altogether: his parents talk as they always did, they inquire after his day, they have dinner, they read the paper and, to aid their dawn starts, they go to bed early, often before their sons. Baelmyrr uses this time to teach, bathe and read to his younger brother, and this too is the time when the boy comes alive inside the house, wrestling with him and doing his best to spark tickle fights he always loses. His respect for their parents is admirable. Even blue in the face, Daelythir always muffles his screeches.

The first real blow comes when the boy is nearing ten. Baelmyrr is busy at the jewellers all day and cannot accompany them, but both parents take Daelythir to the academy. When Baelmyrr gets home in the evening, his parents are at the table picking at dinner, their youngest no-where to be seen.

'Nothing,' says Haelmyrr, by means of explanation for the empty seat. 'Not a hint of talent.'

Baelmyrr hangs up his cloak slowly. 'And I suppose he's too upset to eat?'

'Who wouldn't be,' says Ollyria.

He goes through to the hallway; knocks on Daelythir's door and is admitted immediately. The boy sprawls on his front across the bed, drawing in the margins of a schoolbook and kicking his feet in the air. He looks over at Baelmyrr as the elder brother clicks the door shut and arches a brow.

'It doesn't even matter,' says Daelythir. 'I don't need magic. I'll do something else.'

'Hardly the end of the world, indeed.'

Baelmyrr moves to sit beside him on the bed, and Daelythir leans against him. He's drawn a dragonhawk, wings stretched wide.

'Do you want me to bring you your dinner, then, or are you going to come to it?'

'No, neither.' Daelythir turns his face away and digs his pencil into the page. 'I've eaten already.'

Baelmyrr lies awake in the night. He cannot conceive of a life without magic. His own talent manifested before he turned five. As far as he is concerned, he has always been able to make things move, make them glow. He's always known he can simply blink away from danger; he's always known he can simply teleport indoors whenever he forgets his key.

The thought of his bright little brother without that great strength makes his stomach twinge with anxiety, and his parents' response to the situation has not eased him at all. Because someone lied to him there: the parents who suggested their boy had chosen not to feed, or the boy who claimed he had already. And even if Baelmyrr puzzles out who is the culprit, why is beyond him.

He resolves to do better. He chose the mundane over the magical himself; he is prepared to support Daelythir in whatever profession he pursues. So when he finds his brother struggling to fire arrows at a Farstrider target, it makes sense to help him with his aim, gather up his arrows for him and cheer him on. What makes less sense is the way the boy initially flinches away from him, startled, and fails to relax fully even after Baelmyrr reassures him that he encourages the interest. There's a tension between them walking home, and Daelythir grabs the cuff of his robe as they near the door.

'Don't tell.'

Haelmyrr and Ollyria eventually find out anyway, when footing the bill for Daelythir's lessons with the Farstriders bands together with unexpected costs from the jewellers and leaves Baelmyrr broke, forced to beg them for a loan. He makes up an elaborate series of expenditures and pay dips to throw them off the scent, of course, but his mother has perhaps become wise to his methods. She reads through his finance ledgers while he's out a work, and is waiting for him with them when he gets home.

'It's less what you've done as how you've done it. Behind our backs. Why didn't you bring this to us?'

He doesn't have an answer to that. Perhaps he instinctively felt they would disapprove. Perhaps he wanted to keep for himself the joy of providing Daelythir with something to work for.

'I have to tell your father.'

'Don't – I'll stop the lessons, he doesn't have to know. There'll be no harm done.'

Which is a ridiculous assertion. Daelythir is sixteen and growing ever stronger through his training. He's still a foot shorter than Baelmyrr, still adolescent-lanky for all the new muscle, but he wheels about so sharply that Baelmyrr takes a reflexive step back to defend himself.

'I know you're enjoying yourself, but ultimately I'm just your brother, Lythir, not your guardian, so I simply don't have the sort of rank I'd need to defy them in this.'

'Don't be stupid, Myrr, that didn't stop you before, probably because it's not _true_; who cares what the tyrannicals think, what do they have to do with me?'

'Daelythir, they're your parents and they love you-'

Daelythir had just been heading out; his whipwood bow is in his hand, and it strikes Baelmyrr's temple with impossible speed. It's not a hard blow, but it snaps his head to the side nonetheless, and Baelmyrr staggers back, groping for the wound clumsily with his fingertips.

'_Don't lie_.'

His brother is shaking, but the shock of injury has dislocated Baelmyrr from all his usual behaviours, and he simply stares at Daelythir, warm blood gushing up under his hand and running down the side of his face. That shock lasts four days: he drifts through his tasks at work, banters mechanically at dinner, concerns his friends to the point at which they send him home, insistent that he rests. He emerges from the haze on the fifth day as he leans on a fencepost in the Farstriders' square, watching Daelythir plant every arrow in his quiver in the centre of his target.

'We'll pretend you've stopped,' he tells his baby brother. 'I know this is what you were meant for.'

He cannot address the rest.


	3. Chapter 3

Allévansis, a military friend who has just been discharged for health reasons she never quite makes clear, proposes they find a flat together: herself, her brother Jethrion, and Baelmyrr. He surprises himself with how strongly he wants to go through with it.

He has been watching his family more intently of late, and now he simply wants freedom from the unease that spreads through him every evening as he heads home. He tells himself his father was always distant, his mother always hypercritical, but as he watches them with Daelythir he notes behaviours he only saw emerge after he did so poorly at school: a level of scorn that Daelythir, by comparison, has never earned. But his parents are probably a little tired and nothing more. They'll cheer up when their first son finally stops sitting about and moves out.

He tells Daelythir first, late in the evening as they relax on Baelmyrr's balcony, sharing a pipe of bloodthistle. 'You want to leave me here alone?' is Daelythir's primary retort. He is not violent this time, although there is a flexing of the muscles across his shoulders, a desperate light to his eyes, that suggests it is a close thing.

Baelmyrr does leave him there alone. The flat has five rooms, three windows and low ceilings. There's a crack in the wall that Allévansis stuffs with silk scarves and declares is art. The flat is a mess, it's poorly placed, it smells strangely of birds, but Baelmyrr loves it. He loves coming home to dinner with his friends, eaten off plates balanced on their knees; he loves making short trips to the shop with someone to talk to; he loves the sense of three separate lives bound together in this shared spot. They stay up late playing cards or talking politics. Jethrion spends hours on a celebratory roast, and they spend hours lolling around the house feeling sick to their stomachs the day after.

He visits the family home frequently. Daelythir is initially aloof, but fails to keep it up. He meets Baelmyrr for lunch and for their usual walks, and tells him about a girl he's met who's holding down two part time jobs to pay for her training and about an injured dragonhawk he's been involved in nurturing back to health. It sounds to Baelmyrr as though Daelythir is spending less and less time about the house, but this isn't really a bad thing. He's glad his younger brother seems to be forging a life on his own.

Baelmyrr has had the flat for five months when Daelythir shows up on his doorstep, late at night. He's been locked out for lip. It happens again a few weeks later, and again a few weeks after that, for similarly minor discretions: he was five minutes late for dinner; he tore the knee out of his trousers; he missed a plate when washing up. And though Baelmyrr doesn't mind the extra time to converse with his brother and involve him in household card tournaments and drinking games, he minds the hours and the reasons.

He goes to speak with his mother, and is instead greeted by his father. They pass pleasantries in the hallway, and Haelmyrr doesn't invite him in.

'I don't mean to pass judgement on your method,' says Baelmyrr, 'but when you throw him out he comes to me. And of course I love him, I'm always happy to see him, but I would rather the visits were planned, not made late at night out of a necessity that isn't, in fact, all that necessary.'

'I'll speak to him,' is all their father says.

Daelythir shows up that same night, but he doesn't knock, he doesn't wait placidly at the doorstep. He hurtles through the flat, past the three housemates smoking in the living area, and disappears into Baelmyrr's room, slamming the door behind him.

Baelmyrr finds him pacing like he's caged, from desk to window, window to bed, his hands fisting in his hair, tearing it out. He closes the door slowly behind him and takes a few steps toward his brother, holding out a hand in supplication.

'What's the matter?'

Daelythir turns sharply toward him as though he hadn't noticed him enter, and winces and clutches at his side. Any fear for himself fades from Baelmyrr in that instant. He starts forward, and is shoved roughly back.

'Lythir.'

'Why did you go to him?' His voice is a strangled growl; his hair falls forward in his face, but between the tangled strands his eyes are tearing. 'Why couldn't you just tell me I'm not wanted? I'm used to that! I could handle it!'

'Daelythir, please, what happened?'

'What do you care!'

Allévansis pokes her head around the door, chewing the end of her hand-rolled cigarette. 'Hey ragey,' she says. 'Let's make a night out of it.'

They go through parties and bars and spend an hour out in the open air, blowing smoke rings and singing.

'When you think about it, this is fantastic,' says Allévansis. 'We're a pair of sibling pairs, aren't we? No better setup, if you ask me.'

Daelythir calms as his energy diffuses into walking, dancing and bellowing out lyrics to songs he's only just learned. When they get back, he's dog tired. Sprawled out on the bed, he finally allows Baelmyrr to peel back his shirt, and reveal the split, purpled skin up the side of his ribcage.

'I've had worse,' scoffs Baelmyrr's baby brother.

Baelmyrr doesn't sleep that night: sits in the wooden chair by his desk and writes out lines of figures, watches Daelythir sleeping soundly in this safe little room. His job at the jewellers won't bring in enough.

The hour before dawn sees him in the kitchen, cutting thin slices from last night's roast meat and putting together breakfast and lunch. He sets the food on the bedside table, ruffles his brother's hair, and heads down into the streets before sunlight crests the towers.

He means to head straight for work, but walks a huge, aimless circle around the surrounding district first. His chest feels carved out and hollow. He yearns instinctually for the family home, and hisses fury at this reflex. What could he draw now from the embrace of father or mother but the memory of years of complacency, making excuses they never deserved? He cannot imagine, as he stalks over fractured flagstones, in the shadow of vast spires, that he will ever be able to speak to them again, and the ache in his chest only grows.

He begs from the jeweller a job for his brother, and Daelythir is to start the following day. From the paper he finds weekend employment in the back of a bar, and furthers their income writing articles when he can for the paper itself. Baelmyrr wards the door to the flat, and though his mother shows a few times in the first week, she knocks only once each time, waits a minute at the most, and retreats.

Eventually he becomes known as an unusual conjurer with an exceptional propensity for drawing people into extravagant purchases, though he is increasingly exhausted, and increasingly dependent on their nights on the town for release. There is a magisterial position that he charms his way into via the more sociable members on the board, and suddenly financial pressure wanes; he works only on commissions for the jeweller, and leaves the bar work altogether. Allévansis departs once again with the army after fighting her way to a clean bill of health; Jethrion and Baelmyrr sell the flat and split the proceeds, and suddenly, with Daelythir's wage thrown in, Baelmyrr finds himself able to buy an apartment with full-sized windows and high ceilings.

From his new office, he writes to his parents. He doesn't tell Daelythir he is doing it. His younger brother has yet to really settle. He enjoys the bars, he works well with the jeweller, he is increasingly confident, verging on brash, and yet he is still quick to perceive persecution, and his temper remains a black, violent thing lurking not so very far down.

Baelmyrr has faith in time where Daelythir is concerned, but has waited too long to contact his parents for himself. There is another story there, he is sure, and while it will not excuse anything that has been done to his brother, it might help Baelmyrr to piece together some understanding of the thing. And he needs that, quite desperately. He needs to glean some hint of how the very people who taught him to walk, speak, read, write and flourish could turn so sharply on their sweeter son.

The letter is sent, explaining and inquiring. He can't find it within himself to be cruel; his tone stays largely friendly, though the core demand is clear: explain this to me, all of it.

But the Scourge come two weeks later, and he never gets his reply. He survives. Daelythir survives, and, when they finally regain access to the city and discover the extent of the destruction, is sneering and hateful enough about the deaths of Ollyria and Haelmyrr that Bael has to avoid him for a few days, holed up in his room on the grounds that his hunger for magic is making him ill.

Which it is. It is difficult to be a magister when magic is painful. He hasn't the strength to be subversive at their meetings; his patrols of the damaged city become exhausting affairs; and he finds himself increasingly drawn to baser pleasures. Whatever will tear his focus away from the death and the ache where his magic is draining.

And there comes into all this a magistrix. Suffering as he suffers, no doubt, although she retains an air of competence and immeasurable poise. Not imperious, but decidedly professional in the way she presents herself. There is a relentlessness to her that suits the times, he feels. She goes for what she wants, and for now that seems to be the same arena into which he has strayed: that of arcane powder and nights torn from memory by drink after drink.

She is far older than the average late-night bar-goer, but the times have twisted the averages, skewed what is acceptable, and no-one seems to question her. She is certainly too old for Daelythir, who purports to love her – as though he knows what love truly means in this context, when he is barely an adult.

It is with callous disregard only partly explained by the substances in his bloodstream that Baelmyrr pursues her despite his brother's request that he stay clear, although 'pursue' is a questionable word when Eyria always meets him halfway. Over several weeks, he spends blessed hours with the pain overwhelmed by her body arching beneath him, her hands in his hair, her mouth at his neck, and something cold swamps his heart when Daelythir waxes lyrical about the woman he says now he will marry, if he can.

She chooses to humour the boy, and Baelmyrr finds himself at a loss. How to respond? That deep-seated aversion to the idea is surely jealousy, he must be jealous when he has just lost his lover to his brother, and yet when he muses on the union he cannot see how it will work. Eyria is three hundred years Daelythir's senior, and they've known each other less than a month. His own parents courted for decades – though his mind slips at the thought of them, and Baelmyrr goes over to procrastination.

Kael'thas has brought them a method through which to subdue their addiction, and as a magister Baelmyrr is one of those tasked with passing on his prince's teachings. The methods are gruelling and volatile, but his distaste for them lessens with the ache in his head. For the first time in a long time he finds himself aligned with his magisterial brethren, as he hastens to help save their people, and finds convenient escape from consideration of his brother's betrothal in the exhaustion of his work.

There is, indeed, unusual distance between them on the whole. He isn't sure how to broach it, he isn't sure if Daelythir has even noticed, so caught up in his romance with Eyria, and he suspects any conversation will lead right back to her. They still go out at night, along with Jethrion, who survived the Scourge with heavy scarring over his left side, and Allévansis, who has returned once again to join the new blood knights, and Baelmyrr contents himself with this. The wedding date is still a long way off. He will find something to say between now and then.


	4. Chapter 4

The messenger reaches him in the evening. They delayed because they did not want a highly visible arm of Silvermoon law causing any sort of scene in public.

'You are a magister first,' says the official once she has been welcomed inside, 'and I hope you will keep that in mind when considering the importance of self-discipline and restraint.'

A Farstrider scouting party has been ambushed and destroyed by Amani trolls. The identities of the dead have already been confirmed; Baelmyrr need not worry about doing that himself. They found Daelythir a short distance away, propped against a tree with a gash across his leg. He bled to death, they say.

There is a military funeral that he attends but can't recall. Allévansis says they read out the names and treated the bodies with utmost respect. She says it was a dignified ceremony. A worthy ceremony.

Baelmyrr locks himself away. Nothing could be, or ever was, worthy of his brother.


End file.
